Thursday, March 16, 2006

Kids

'An immense sadness - he believed himself beyond such irritants - had risen up in his soul. He and the beloved would vanish utterly - would continue neither in Heaven nor on Earth. They had won past the conventions, but Nature still faced them, saying with even voice, "Very well, you are thus; I blame none of my children. But you must go the way of all sterility." The thought that he was sterile weighed on the young man with a sudden shame. His mother or Mrs. Durham might lack mind or heart, but they had done visible work; they had handed on the torch their sons would tread out.'

- E. M. Forster, Maurice

'O how blessed it would be never to marry, or grow old; but to spend one's life innocently and indifferently among the trees and rivers which alone can keep one cool and childlike in the mist of the troubles of the world! Marriage or any other great joy would confuse the clear vision which is still mine. And at the thought of losing that, I cried in my heart. 'No, I will never leave you - for a husband or a lover', and straightaway I started chasing rabbits across the heath with Jeremy and the dogs...Shall I ever bear a child I wonder? [If marriage and children were not for her, her role, as she was acutely aware, was fixed (she wrote to her favourite spinster) as] a virgin, an Aunt, an authoress.'